Domestic

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 5, 4 February 1909, Page 193

Domestic

By MAUREEN

"■* "Cloaning Pantry Shelves. „' — Idoas concerning the arrangements in pantries are changing under the influence of schools of domestic science. The majority of housewives want white paper spread on the shelves and edging in addition, but sanitation dictates a finished surface which can bo wipod clean with a damp cloth. If your shelf is finished in a hard finish keep it immaculate without paper. The first exclamation. -is : ' But it will get dusty I ' So will the paper get dusty, for the dust falls upon anything it can. Just try once to clear a shelf completely, put on paper and replace everything, and then try setting things aside enough to wipe the shelf without having to clear it all and see which is the loss labor. If your shelves have not a hard finish cover them with oilcloth. Floor oilcloth — you can get it almost white — is "the best, cut carefully to fit each place. It wears for years, is not marred easily by something hot being placed on it, and is washed easily. Tlio Open Window. Dr. Olsen, a great authority on the subject, -writes as follows in Good Health:. — •■ Every night hundreds of thousands, yes, millions of people, poison their hmgs by breathing over and over again the foul foetid air of shut-in bedrooms. Even in the warm summer months the windows remain closed, and the atmosphere is nothing less than filthy. The worst of it is that people otherwise scrupulously cleanly cannot se^ that- it is the height of uncleanliness to breathe stale,- foul air, and compel their friends who call upon them to breathe it too. Sanitary science is still in its infancy wifti us. It began with drains. Men recognised that the grosser wastes of the human body must be got rid of in some systematic way if life was to be sweet and wholesome. In very recent times it lias begun to recognise the need of light, and some of the dark, dismal slum tenements in our over-crowded cities are being declared unfit for human habitation. Strange to say ,tlie most obvious of all. our requirements from the health standpoint is still practically ignored, namely, the primary need of fresh air.- The lungs are excretory organs. Let this apparently unknown fact be writ large in every toxt-book of health. Let it be blazoned on the buildings. Let the public press carry the message into every home. Not only are the lungs excretory organs. They . are such par excellence. The other excretory organs may cease to -functionate, and yet a man lives on for hours and in some cases days; but when the lungs cease to operate, death follows in a very few minutes. The a,ir that is expired from the lungs is laden with poisonous waste matter of which there is sufficient in a single broath to contaminate about three cubic feet of good air, rendering it unfit for use. Hence, our living and bedrooms, in order to be in any reasonable degree wholesome, must continually receive now and large supplies of pure air from the outside. The model house of the future will probably be built iii largo part of porous materials, thus admitting fresh air from all sides, without draughts. The ordinary dwel-ling-house of to-day is about as nearly air-tight as it can bo made, and scientifically loss adapted to living purposes than the wigwams of the American* Indian or the air dwellings of other savage tribes. In fact it is hardly less than a death-trap, and if it were not for the incidental opening of doors in order to go out and in, and the badlyfitting window saslie's, and a fow other crevices here and thoro, thanks to careless carpenters, the atmosphere of bedrooms in many houses would soon become absolutely deadly. The best part of a modorn house is its windows. To keep these opon day and night, and to make the air inside approach as nearly as possible the air outside, should bo the first business of the housekeeper. Everything else should be held subservient to the need of fresn air.